Across the globe, media is debating why United States voters seem to have become more conservative. In this article abridged from the US Socialist Worker <http://www.socialistworker.org>, Lance Selfa comes to different conclusions.

Hardly had the votes been tallied, when the conventional wisdom to explain President George Bush’s 3.5 million-vote margin over Democratic Party challenger John Kerry had already taken shape. According to exit polls, 22% of voters cited “moral values” as their chief concern — trumping even Iraq, terrorism and the economy. And 80% of these “values voters” backed Bush.

“[Kerry’s] stiffness cannot fully explain the ‘God gap’ that drives people of faith, and those more concerned with moral issues than economic ones, to vote disproportionately Republican,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in its November 7 editorial. “They just don’t believe that the Democrats share their values. More than any other factor, this failure cost the Democrats the presidency and four Senate seats on Tuesday.”

The right-wing Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) put it similarly: “The problem is that many millions of voters simply do not believe that Democrats take their cultural fears and resentments seriously, and that Republicans do.”

Some left-wing commentators sounded the same themes — like Nation columnist Katha Pollitt. “Maybe this time, the voters chose what they actually want: Nationalism, pre-emptive war, order not justice, ‘safety’ through torture, backlash against women and gays, a gulf between haves and have-nots, government largesse for their churches and a my-way-or-the-highway president,” Pollitt wrote. “Where, I wonder, does that leave us?”

Pollitt’s picture of the US as populated by right-wing yahoos fits neatly with the mainstream media claim that Bush’s victory symbolised a revolt of conservative country bumpkins against liberal city slickers in New York and San Francisco.

But this explanation — whatever its form — doesn’t hold up when you look at the data from exit polls. According to those polls, Bush actually lost a little ground in rural areas, compared to the 2000 election. But he polled a full 10% better in urban areas.

Christian nation?

Also, if you compare the composition of voters between this year and 2000, you find that the percentage of evangelical Christians remained the same; the percentage of people opposed to abortion remained the same; and the percentage of people who say they pray every day didn’t change either.

The media’s focus on the role of one segment of the electorate — conservative Christians — in determining the outcome obscures the fact that Bush did better across the board.

In fact, Democratic pollster Mark Penn said that shifts toward Bush among Latinos and women — two Democratic “base” groups — more easily explain Bush’s popular vote victory than the votes of the Christian right.

So the real question isn’t why Bush won, but why Kerry couldn’t hold onto groups that reliably vote Democratic — minorities, women, city dwellers. Or why, after an unprecedented effort to push up Democratic turnout, Kerry couldn’t inspire 45% of the population — disproportionately working-class, female and minority — to go to the polls.

This leads right back to the character of Kerry’s campaign — his compromised Republican-lite strategy of pursuing conservative “swing voters”, instead of presenting people likely to vote Democrat with a compelling reason to choose him over Bush.

Republican lite?

Kerry accepted the terms of debate that the Bush administration set in the post-9/11 ideological climate. So he twisted and turned on the Iraq war — voting to authorise Bush’s invasion, criticising it during the primaries, and then, after clinching the nomination, swinging right once more.

People who were motivated to vote against Bush because of the Iraq war were presented with a Democratic challenger who declared that he still would have voted to authorise an invasion, even knowing that there were no weapons of mass destruction — and that he was dedicated to “winning” the war.

It was like this with any number of issues. Terrorism? Kerry tried to portray himself as tougher than Bush. Gay marriage? Kerry opposed it, but said the decision should be left to the states — which is exactly what voters in the 11 states that passed referendums banning gay marriage did. Jobs and health care? Kerry promised tax breaks to business.

With Kerry mouthing Republican talking points, he actually helped to legitimise many of Bush’s disastrous policies. No wonder so many voters were willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, even though they were unhappy with most of his policies.

Meanwhile, those on the left committed to Kerry’s victory spent months haranguing independent anti-war candidate Ralph Nader and his supporters — and contributed to the disappearance of any ideological alternative. At a time when Bush’s popularity was cratering over the disastrous war in Iraq, most of the antiwar movement got behind a pro-war candidate — bringing activism to a virtual standstill.

This is why Pollitt’s post-election rant is so disingenuous. “One leftist intellectual I saw at an election-night party suggested to me that Kerry shot himself in the foot when he didn’t throw Abu Ghraib in Bush’s face and proclaim that as president he would never permit torture”, Pollitt wrote. “I would have wept with joy to hear that speech, but where is the evidence that significant numbers of voters not already committed to Kerry — let alone voters who supported Bush — were outraged by Abu Ghraib? Did I miss the demonstrations, the sit-ins, the teach-ins, the lying down in traffic by swing voters and nonvoters to force the Bush administration to account for this outrageous crime against humanity?”

Pollitt didn’t “miss the demonstrations”. But that’s the point — no one organised any. And the main reason for that is that leaders of the antiwar movement didn’t want to embarrass their pro-war candidate.

Nader-Camejo

Unfortunately, the “Anybody But Bush” wave was so powerful that it left Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo’s campaign isolated. There was a tremendous opening to build a mass electoral campaign uniting the antiwar left behind Nader-Camejo in a fight against the bipartisan war parties. But the anti-Nader slander offensive made it impossible to know how many millions of people we could have gotten to vote against the war.

Nader and Camejo received just over 400,000 votes on November 2, according to the official count. That turnout may have been as much as twice as high if Nader-Camejo had been on the ballot in the 15 states where the ticket was kept off — Camejo’s home state of California being one of them.

But even the total that Nader-Camejo did get — in the face of all the abuse that the Democrats dished out — shows that there is a base to work from.

The campaign brought together tens of thousands of people at roughly 100 forums and rallies across the country, and championed the third-party antiwar message to millions through the mainstream media. The meetings won people to the campaign who worked hard for what they believed in.

However, the fact that most organised progressive groups and well-known personalities went over to Kerry meant that the Nader-Camejo campaign’s pre-existing political network was very small.

Ordinary people in the US aren’t part of some reactionary mass, and their consciousness isn’t fixed in stone. To take a small example, consider that 60% of the 2004 electorate supports either marriage rights or civil unions for gays and lesbians — a position that was considered “controversial” only four years ago.

Consciousness can shift to the left — if people’s life experience challenges their ideas and if they hear a left alternative. By the same token, it can shift in the other direction if those who stand for peace and justice remain silent.

The Bush gang’s announced agenda of more war, privatising Social Security and ending legal abortion will force millions of people — including some who voted for the Republicans — to fight back. It’s the job of the left to build these struggles wherever they occur — and to build a real alternative to the rotten politics of the status quo.

From Green Left Weekly, November 17, 2004.
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